Interventions: Rewriting the Canadian Landscape

Canadian landscape painting has long carried a sense of distance. Vast, quiet, and often untouched, the land is presented as something to behold rather than inhabit. The viewer stands at the edge, looking in. In this series, Interventions, I step inside. I am rewriting the Canadian Landscape.

These paintings begin as homage to artists such as Lawren Harris and Emily Carr, whose work has profoundly shaped how we see and understand Canada. Their landscapes are not only images, but part of a shared visual language – icons that have come to define a national identity. Rather than approaching these works from a distance, I engage them directly, entering the image and reworking it through my own perspective.

Each painting is an intervention into art history. I revisit familiar compositions and forms, but I do not preserve them as fixed. Instead, I shift them – through colour, symbol, and presence -allowing the image to open up and speak again in a contemporary voice. The past remains visible, but it is no longer static.

A central gesture within this series is the act of placing myself within the landscape. Where these historic works often suggest solitude or absence, I introduce a figure – my own – as both observer and participant. This is a deliberate shift. It challenges the idea of the landscape as something separate or distant and instead positions it as lived, experienced, and ongoing.

By inserting myself into these spaces, I am also acknowledging lineage. These works are not about replacing what came before, but about continuing it. Canadian art history is not a closed chapter; it is a living narrative. Through these interventions, I locate my practice within that continuum, adding a contemporary voice to an enduring conversation.

Rewriting the Canadian Landscape – Lawren Harris Connection

This painting, With Hearts On Our Sleeves,  is part of my Interventions series, engaging directly with the iconic landscape language of Lawren Harris – specifically his 1926 work North Shore, Lake Superior. The original composition, known for its stillness and clarity, becomes a point of entry rather than a fixed image.

Within this familiar terrain, I introduce my own presence. By placing myself into the landscape, the painting shifts from observation to participation. The quiet, uninhabited space associated with Harris is interrupted – transformed into a lived and contemporary environment.

The dialogue between past and present unfolds through this gesture. Harris’ vision of the Canadian landscape remains visible, but it is no longer distant or untouched. Instead, it becomes active, evolving, and open to reinterpretation.

This work moves beyond homage. It is an intervention into Canadian art history – one that honours the legacy of the landscape while asserting a new voice within it.

Rewriting the Canadian Landscape – Emily Carr

This painting feels like a quiet collision between memory, identity, and landscape—a conversation staged inside the lush, breathing green of the West Coast.

Inspired by Emily Carr’s Indian Church, the iconic white chapel emerges again here, but it no longer stands alone in solemn stillness. Instead, it is partially veiled – interrupted – by a contemporary figure caught mid-gesture, pulling a vivid red garment over their head. The act is intimate, almost ceremonial, as though the figure is stepping into a role, or shedding one.

The red dominates the canvas like a pulse – alive, urgent, impossible to ignore. It cuts through the dense, Carr-like forest, where deep greens twist and press inward, echoing both protection and pressure. The church, traditionally a symbol of colonial presence in Carr’s work, is now fragmented and repeated, its crosses peeking through the foliage like quiet witnesses.

There is tension here: between past and present, visibility and concealment, identity and imposed narrative. The figure’s face is hidden, denying us easy recognition. Instead, we are left with gesture and colour – universal languages that ask more than they answer.

This is not just a homage – it is a re-entry. A stepping into the landscape that Emily Carr once painted, but with a contemporary body, a contemporary voice. The result is a layered story about Canada itself: how histories linger, how identities are worn and re-worn, and how the land continues to hold it all, quietly, relentlessly.

My work has always been rooted in storytelling through symbols, cultural references, and the landscapes that shape us. In Interventions, that language meets the canon. The result is a layering of time – where past and present exist simultaneously, and where meaning is not fixed but continually evolving.

For the viewer, there is both recognition and disruption. Familiar forms draw you in, but something has shifted. The image asks to be seen again, reconsidered, reinterpreted. For collectors, these works offer a connection to the legacy of Canadian painting while carrying a distinct and contemporary perspective – bridging history and reinvention.

These are not quiet tributes. They are active engagements. They are a way of stepping into the landscape, into the image, and into the ongoing story of Canadian art.

View the Interventions series on my website.